


Like Butter (Scraped Over Too Much Bread)

by Umecchi



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 18:46:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7652638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Umecchi/pseuds/Umecchi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alaude had known it was likely an inevitable confrontation. Daemon wasn't one to ignore people who were annoying him or getting in his way, and Alaude had always been magnificent at accomplishing both of those things at the same time.</p><p>So he'd known. Didn't mean he was happy about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Butter (Scraped Over Too Much Bread)

The sky was red when Daemon arrived.

With sunset had come a bloodbath. It spread like a thickening film over the sky, wiping from existence the unblemished, untarnished, unscarred blue of the day. It was a day that had encompassed everyone under it in welcome, with no clouds lurking to inhibit its vastness. The new sky was crimson, soaking everyone underneath its umbrella of protection in blood, bearing a singular likeness to the previous sky in its lack of a cloud.

Alaude hadn’t taken notice of the weather until it was already halfway to dusk, the blood of the dying sun spilling through the French doors of his office, pooling on the floor, and staining his walls. The lack of natural light was what brought the approach of night to Alaude’s attention, though instead of putting away his work to finish tomorrow, he pulled out a candle and matchbox from his desk so he could continue without straining his eyes. It was as he struck the match, sparks igniting and flickering out like brief fireworks, that Daemon arrived.

He appeared like a mirage in the middle of Alaude’s office. One moment Alaude was alone, and the next, a shimmer, and a man stood across from where Alaude sat, his shadow cutting through the red dye that had spread across the floor and walls.

Daemon was someone Alaude was unfortunately well acquainted with. Not too long ago, both Alaude and Daemon were the Cloud and Mist Guardian to Vongola Primo, respectively. In that time, Alaude had been forced to learn tolerance and patience because of Daemon, who was a needling, irksome human being who possessed a repugnant personality and found delight in preying on Alaude’s last nerve. Alaude was wholly certain that Daemon had fallen further into depravity within the interim of their last meeting. Daemon’s unstable psyche after the death of his lover, Elena, had given Alaude enough foreboding that he had inserted carefully chosen moles into Vongola territory and staff to gather intelligence on the goings on within the Vongola Family, with an order to pay special attention to Vongola Secondo’s Mist Guardian: Daemon Spade. The intelligence did not refute any of Alaude’s concerns. No, instead it gave credence.

Alaude glanced up at Daemon briefly upon his materialization, then looked away dismissively and struck the match once more. When the match-tip bloomed into a steady, if small, flame, he pressed it to the candle’s wick.

In Alaude’s peripheral vision, however, he observed Daemon, who slouched languidly. His posture and general mien were that of a man with utmost confidence, rightful or otherwise. Every part of his body was loose and boneless like a snake, without any visible tension. Even his clothes suggested at a casual meeting. His blue jacket, with its yellow epaulette shoulder pieces, was a bastardized near replica of a French military uniform – a mockery of Alaude’s countrymen that possessed actual discipline and honor, made even more insulting by the carelessly unclasped buttons. Beyond that, he wore white pants, brown boots, and a red shirt that did nothing to hide his slender, verging on skeletal, form.

More important than body language, more significant than what Daemon was wearing, was what he was _not_ wearing: his Devil’s Lens, usually hanging from his neck like a sentimental locket, was absent. The absence of Daemon’s greatest weapon very nearly made Alaude begin to question his prediction of what Daemon’s visit would entail – as well as how it would end.

Then Daemon smiled, a garish, gruesome thing that was reminiscent of a Glasgow grin. It slashed across his face with the sharpness of a finely honed blade, and possessed the curled edges of someone that tasted both victory and madness. It caused Alaude to compare Daemon with a demented clown – slather him in some gaudy make-up and the comparison would be as complete as it would be uncanny. No wig would even be necessary: Daemon’s hair, blue with two zigzagging partings and a look about it (perhaps how it fell) that gave one the impression of a melon, was ridiculous enough on its own.

The smile rose a previously dormant tension between Alaude and Daemon that they were both intimately familiar with. Alaude was sure that, if he breathed in through his mouth, he would have trouble tasting anything but the bloodlust. As it was, Alaude continued to breath through his nose, and any doubts he harboured on the conclusion of Daemon’s visit were dispelled.

“No touching reunion?” Daemon asked lightly. He gave only the barest impression of waiting for a response before continuing. “It’s been so long, after all, and lately I have found myself curious. I often wonder to myself, ‘How are my previous fellow Guardians are doing?’

“I was concerned, very concerned. ‘How are they all doing with dear Primo’s abandonment?’ I asked myself. ‘His distance?’ Though _I_ have Secondo to provide Harmony, G, Usari, Knuckle, the Lightning brat, even yourself . . . you were all left bereft, denied even that cold comfort.”

The light dig, at the falling in status that all Guardians other than Daemon himself went through when they declined to stay with the Vongola Family in anything other than a fringe capacity, passed through Alaude without so much as a whisper. It was the type of taunt that would have worked better on proud, hotheaded G rather than Alaude, who had never acknowledged the ‘honor’ and ‘status’ being a Guardian entailed. Even G, after two years without Giotto, most likely wouldn’t fall for the heavy-handed trick. G, when Alaude has his weekly appointment with him, was always quiet. It was a brittle quietness, and anyone who knew G before Giotto left would look upon the current G the same way one would look at the empty husk of a corpse. It would, perhaps, worry a normal person. Lucky, then, that Alaude was not normal, so all he did was take any action available to him to keep G and the other Guardians of Primo (excluding Daemon) relatively stable and delay the inevitable. At least G wasn’t as bad as Lampo, who had become a frustrating dichotomy of calculative and reckless, spitting out cutting words during the unending absence of Giotto in the hopes of garnering a desired response.

Alaude had perhaps learned even more patience from Lampo than Daemon.

Daemon, with his slippery gait, paced closer to Alaude’s desk. He brushed his fingers to the dark wood that was made even darker in the shadows cast by the candle light, and held his fingers up for inspection. Searching for dust that was absent, as if he seriously believed that Alaude, without Giotto, would have become apathetic to the state of his possessions.

“I worried,” Daemon said musingly. “Apparently for no reason.”

Alaude wondered if Daemon had met with the other Primo Guardians or if, instead of doing the legwork himself, he had a Vongola grunt report on their state of being. If Daemon had visited personally, then he would have surely seen that there was, in fact, reason to worry. Then again, Daemon wasn’t any more normal than Alaude was, and he certainly didn’t seem to see anything wrong in himself. Maybe he wouldn’t see anything wrong with a Knuckle who prayed more than he talked, with an Asari who never smiled, with a G who stared at a blank wall for large amounts of time, or a Lampo who had lost his caution in favour of courting suicide by Alaude’s fraying temper.

Alaude glanced up once again, dragging his eyes from the fragile flicker of candle fire that’s miniscule heat was likely coaxing more color to Alaude’s cheeks than there had been in over a year. Daemon caught his gaze, a challenge in the lift of his eyebrows, the tick of his jaw, and the feverish light in his eyes. Alaude did not attempt to meet the challenge, did not entertain or even acknowledge it. Instead, he started straightening his paperwork.

“It surprised me, I admit. It also surprised me that none of you has left to join Primo in whatever plebeian corner of the world he’s sequestered himself in. Perhaps,” Daemon said, and looked coyly at Alaude from under his eyelashes. “Perhaps the founder of CEDEF and Vongola’s illustrious External Adviser cannot _find_ where Primo hides himself?” Daemon drew in a sarcastic gasp, an exaggerated expression of dismay on his face that would never win him the lead role in a play. He seemed unable to smother his gloating smile.

“What is the world coming to when even the supposedly competent head of an intelligence division can’t locate his own Sky . . .” Daemon murmured, then chuckled lowly, a deeply disturbing sound that traced up one’s spine with light, sinister fingers.

“Ah . . . but I forgot,” Daemon said softly, gratingly. “You don’t even occupy those positions anymore, do you Alaude? No longer the External Advisor . . .  no longer in charge of the organization that you created . . ..”

When Alaude still gave no reaction, even at the defamation of his competence or the reminder of the loss of his positions, the smile Daemon had been wearing for the entirety of their one-sided conversation fell. He stared at Alaude, scrutinizing and curious – but also irritated.

“What, so you’re a mute now?” Daemon snapped.

Alaude interlaced his fingers and rested them on his desk. He thought about saying something, maybe a simple “No,” or, if he was feeling immature, a bratty “Yes.” Alaude hadn’t been that bratty since he was four years old, though, and the question was stupid enough that he was disinclined to use up the energy even a one-word answer would take. In the end he said nothing. In the end a verbal response from Alaude was unnecessary, because his body took over for him.

From Alaude’s nose came a steady snake of blood that gathered tremulously on his upper lip before it slithered, up and over his mouth and to his chin, where it dripped, damningly, onto his fingers.

Daemon watched this happen in fascination, his smile recovered and the glitter in his eyes a reflection of the candlelight. “My, my . . . are you feeling alright, Little Bird?”

Alaude calmly pulled from his sleeve a kerchief, the original white of the fabric long since blotted out in favor of the brown stain of old blood, and slowly wiped away the blood.

Daemon watched him, a hunger etching his face into something ghoulish when combined with the dim lighting. It made Alaude cautious, made him wary. So when Daemon lunged over the desk, his hands outstretched and fingers curved like bleached bone claws, Alaude was ready.

Alaude threw his bloody kerchief up, over Daemon’s face and obscuring his vision. Daemon snarled and ripped the fabric from his eyes, but he had no time to react before Alaude rammed into his side full force. Their momentum carried them across the room, and their combined weight shattered the glass of the French doors to Alaude’s balcony. They scuffled, grappling at each others’ arms and trying to stomp on toes, and hit the brass balcony railing, where they flailed. Daemon tried to push Alaude over, but Alaude twisted his fingers tightly into the lapels of Daemon’s jacket to pull him down with him. They toppled, limbs tangled together, and plunged two floors down to impact painfully with the stone patio below.

Alaude laid there, stunned and winded. He shifted, grinding his back into the shards of glass that had been his inept cushion, and got to his feet not a second after Daemon to take stock of his injuries. Inconsequential and easily ignored were the small cuts that littered his body, a good few on his face. More vexing were the little glass shards that had been imbedded into his skin and stung like festering slivers. The aching was the worst; back, spine, tailbone, and perhaps even the back of his head. He felt like one big, blooming bruise, but was at least thankful that nothing was broken so early on in the battle.

Alaude sized Daemon up, and Daemon returned his regard. The circled like hungry wolves, salivating for chance to rend flesh from bone. When Daemon feinted rushing at him Alaude remained steady, though his fisted hands tightened their grip. Daemon laughed darkly at this and relaxed his stance arrogantly. Alaude saw the opening for the blatant trap it was, but firmed his resolve and fell into it willingly, sprinting to close the distance between Daemon and himself. A pillar of fire erupted, directly in his path, but Alaude didn’t try to veer in a different direction, didn’t try to avoid the flames, and didn’t slow.

If anything he ran faster, and leapt straight into the fire.

He didn’t feel the heat, didn’t have sweat gather on his brow, didn’t blister and crisp like a macabre barbeque. He didn’t feel anything except for the wind whipping his pale hair from his forehead because, in reality, there was nothing else there _to_ feel. It was all an illusion. A construction composed of Daemon’s Mist Flame and shaped by his imagination. Alaude rejected the fire’s existence as illogical, decisively determined it was fake, and for that he emerged from the other side untouched.

Daemon was ready for him. He blocked Alaude’s initial strike, though Alaude’s second punch grazed his cheek. Daemon brought his knee up to Alaude’s gut, who twisted out of the way. Alaude lashed out with a kick to the back of Daemon’s knees and got an elbow to his sternum for his trouble. More illusions were conjured: vines of the garden lashed out like cognitive bindings, the cupid in the fountain spat out a localized blizzard, and monsters, made of shadows or tacky blood or mouths of sharp teeth, attacked. All aimed for Alaude, and all were ignored without so much as a swat of annoyance. The constructs fazed through Alaude, unnoticed by Alaude, who had his full attention focussed on Daemon, kicking and punching and getting kicked and punched in return.

Alaude grappled for a hold, a firm one to keep the slippery bastard still for just a moment, just a few seconds. That was all he would need.

Daemon backed off momentarily and Alaude let him.

“How are you doing it?” Daemon demanded furiously. “How are you keeping them from going into Discord, from self-destructing?” He gesticulated wildly as he spoke, he movements unhinged. “You don’t even care about them! They’re annoyances to you, so why go out of your way? It’s the visits, isn’t it? You go to see them individually on the same day every week, at the same _time_ every week. You’re as predictable as clockwork,” he said scornfully, “at least to those that know you or aren’t complete idiots.”

Alaude was silent, without the breath for words. While Daemon’ breaths were just slightly laboured, Alaude’s were rasping and rattling in his lungs. His body was heavy with a fatigue that was not all due to the fight, his head and chest were aching, and there was a stitch in his side that had been paining him before Daemon had set so much as a foot in his office. Alaude reached up to wipe the cold sweat that had gathered on his face, and realized when he pulled his hand away from his face and looked at it that his nosebleed had continued its flow throughout his whole fight with Daemon. Perhaps that was what he could attribute his light-headedness to.

“ _How?_ ” Daemon asked, his voice very close to agonized in his frustration, like Alaude had ruined all of his plans by keeping the rest of Primo’s Guardians from committing suicide with destructive behaviour by keeping them from the cusp of fully realized Discord. “ _How?_ ”

As if he would tell him anything, Alaude thought as he breathed around the wet cough building in his chest. As if he would tell Daemon that Alaude, with his Cloud ability to Propagate, had been acting as a substitute Sky, a woeful proxy, to G and Knuckle and Usari and Lampo with the trace amounts of Sky Flames Alaude had retained ever since his Harmonization with Giotto. As if Alaude would tell Daemon that continually Propagating Giotto’s stale Flames took such a great toll on Alaude’s body that now he stood across from Daemon, not as equals, but with the shameful certainty that he would be destroyed utterly if he treated this as a straight-forward battle of strength alone, discarding wits and tricks. As if Alaude would tell Daemon that he had become so weak he was no longer able to manifest his Cloud Flames outside of his body.

Daemon let out a sound of wordless rage at Alaude’s refusal to speak, and attacked once more.

Daemon had been treating their entire fight as a joke, like he couldn’t be bothered or there was no reason to take Alaude seriously. That was why he didn’t wear his Devil’s Lens, Alaude realized. Daemon had determined who would emerge victorious before their battle had even begun, before he had even laid eyes on Alaude’s sorry state, and it was galling that he was right.

Now, however, Daemon dropped his parody of a cat toying with a mouse. His playful smile was replaced with a sneer, and when he attacked his didn’t pull his punches.

The difference was stark and pitiful. Alaude was tossed around his own garden, just barely evading lethal attacks. At one point, Daemon pilfered a rake that was lying unassumingly against a tree and whacked Alaude over the head with such force that the combed crossbar at the end broke off the pole and Alaude was sent flying. By the time Daemon recovered his composure and tucked away his rage, Alaude found himself almost unable to get back on his feet. A shoulder dislocated, broken and fractured ribs, countless bruises, and doubtless a rather serious concussion. His body was in such pain, had been in such pain for over a year of self abuse, and yet he could no longer feel it with confidence and clarity, as if he had been disconnected from it.

He observed his body as if from an outsiders’ perspective, and found it entirely lacking. His body was slow, reflexes dull, and the posture was terrible. The blood flowing from various points on his body’s surface brought Alaude only distaste, perhaps even disgust. His body of now felt foreign, changed, when comparing it to his body of just two years ago. His body was no longer his.

“Has someone gotten lazy?” Daemon said, voice taunting and cruel. It drew Alaude’s drifting attention back to the matter at hand. “My my . . . I’d call that dereliction of duty, but you don’t actually have any official duties anymore, do you Little Bird?”

Alaude straightened his spine as much as he was able, sharp rib shards poking his insides. He staggered a few steps forward while Daemon watched, entertained. Then, waveringly, Alaude charged.

Daemon took a step back in surprise, but raised the pole of the rake like a spear, and it was upon the jagged, splintered end of the pole that Alaude was impaled. Alaude coughed wetly, and nearly blacked out when it jarred the wooden spear that was stuck in his chest and likely puncturing a lung. Warm, copper fluid filled Alaude’s mouth and dripped from his lips. Black spots hung like dark moons in his vision, and he reached out, grasping onto something, anything, to ground him in consciousness. Deaf and blind, he felt what he gripped and was vaguely startled to note it was Daemon’s epaulette shoulder pieces that Alaude so despised.

His hearing returned abruptly, though muted, and was immediately assaulted with hysterical, crying laughter. “You stupid—you just—ran into it!” Daemon said in disbelief, and gasped in between cackles. “I didn’t even have to do anything! You just killed yourself!” Daemon looked at him then, no doubt wanting to see Alaude in the final throes of his anticlimactic death, but what he saw instead made his face change. His elation deflated, his giddiness popped like the blown bubbles of a child, because Alaude was smiling. He was smiling as Daemon had been when he appeared in Alaude’s office; triumph and madness mixed together, so seamlessly merging that they could no longer be distinguished from one another. Alaude laughed, choking on his own blood, right in Daemon’s face. He clutched the epaulette with bloodless finger tips and, liquid dripping down his chin like he’d bitten into a cherry tomato, he said, “Fucking melon,” before ice sprouted from hands.

The ice adhered Alaude’s hands to Daemon’s shoulders with the stubborn grip of barnacles and continued to spread up Alaude’s forearms and down to Daemon’s.

“What is this! What are you doing!” Daemon said, watching the ice of the Zero Point Breakthrough spread with horror and fear that he was vainly attempting to conceal with outrage. He scratched at the ice encasing his shoulders, splitting skin on the spikes, before his hands, too, were covered and manacled with ice. It spread quickly, on Daemon and Alaude both. From shoulders to chest to neck and waist, and all the while Daemon struggled. He yelled out threats – at Alaude, who was lifeless; at the ice, which was mindless; and at Giotto, who was absent – until, very suddenly, he was as silent as Alaude.

**Author's Note:**

> So. My hand slipped and now Alaude's dead.


End file.
